Tuxedo: Poems by Tad Cornell (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9780990863366)

Award-winning American poet and performer Tad Cornell (T. H. Cornell) was essentially an underground poet after his first book, Glance Over at These Creatures, was published in 1977. Some of his poetry was distributed conventionally, but more was personally bound and hand-gifted, presented in poetry slams and avant garde stage productions (in Hong Kong, Houston, and Philadelphia), and on guitar and vocals as part of poetry fusion rock band, Edgar Allen and the Poettes, and other ensembles. Cornell's childhood until age twelve was in Germany where his father worked for the US State Department (as a CIA agent, Cornell later learned). He was a child opera star at the Frankfurt Playhouse, and studied theater and wrote music in high school in suburban Philadelphia. During three semesters at Goddard College, he was inspired to pursue poetry by Paul Nelson. Cornell earned a BA in English from Temple University, a master's degree in special education from Antioch College, and a master's degree in English literature from Villanova University. The special needs of his only child, born with spina bifida, led him to a thirty-year career in social work. At intervals along the way, he was drawn to consider the priesthood, served as a Trappist novice in the Abbey of the Genesee, and studied theology in Rome at the Angelicum.